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Posts Tagged ‘horse’

The best-selling book on “popular mycology,” Mycelium Running, would be a useful reference book in every home, especially to anyone involved in farming (or gardening), forest management and environmental cleanup. The second half of the book is an instruction manual on growing delectable mushrooms for food and medicine.

The book is filled to the brim with valuable information on how to improve soils for farming, gardening and forestry; create simple, low-cost biofilters for waste water (mycofiltration); and clean up toxic waste (mycoremediation).

As an example, a method for building a mycofiltration bed to filter waste water is described in exacting detail. Dimensions, depth, layers and recommended materials and mushrooms are listed. This mycofiltration is useful, among other things, for filtering manure enriched farm runoff.

Added perks when using mycofiltration is that the beds also yield crops of scrumptious food mushrooms, and every 2-3 years, as the bedding material needs to be replaced, the old material can be spread on the farm fields as a rich fertilizer.

Another piece of useful information for farmers and gardeners found in Mycelium Running concerns the no-till farming method as opposed to the conventional method of plowing the fields after harvest. No-till farming helps promote saprophytic fungi (decomposing fungi), which break down organic material at a pace better suited to plant-life than the rapid and heat producing breakdown by anaerobic bacteria, which are the primary decomposers when stubble is plowed under. The mycelium of saprophytic fungi also binds the soil to prevent erosion and loss of valuable nutrients.

Riding a horse on a trail ride is one of the most pleasurable activities you can do to experience the great outdoors, but horses are not all the same. I discovered that the Paso Fino horse is one of the best horses to take out riding. Its ride is pleasurable to a level that could be compared to eating ice cream on a hot summer day as a young child. It gave me a feeling of pure joy when I rode this horse, and it is primarily for one reason, its steady gait.

In case you don’t know, a horse’s gait is the way that it moves. In determining a horse’s gait, you look at the pattern, speed, positions, and the sequence of steps that a horse takes while it is moving. The Paso Fino is special in the fact that it has a unique pattern of foot movements that give it a very smooth ride. You won’t see this horse bounding its rider up-and-down as it moves.

The cadence of the Paso’s 1-2-3-4 gait is distinctive as the horse effortlessly glides to its destination. It is almost like military precision when it takes its strides. I liken it to the riderless horse of presidential funerals. To be riding a horse that moves like this is akin to feeling like royalty.